Animation of a virtual object

Active Publication Date: 2014-09-25
NATURALMOTION
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  • Summary
  • Abstract
  • Description
  • Claims
  • Application Information

AI Technical Summary

Benefits of technology

[0010]According to a first aspect of the invention, there is provided a method of generating a target animation of a virtual object, the target animation comprising a blend of two or more animations from a plurality of predetermined animations, the blend comprising a weighted combination of the two or more animations based on respective blend weights for the two or more animations, the method comprising: receiving an input identifying a first point, specifying the target animation, in a control parameter space, wherein there are one or more predetermined properties for animations of the virtual object and where each point in the control parameter space defines a

Problems solved by technology

However, if these approaches were taken for every conceivable action that the virtual object may perform (or for those actions that one may wish the virtual object to be able to perform at some stage), then this would lead to an unfeasibly large number of animations being created and an immense amount of data being stored.
Moreover, using such “canned” animation data is often unsatisfactory (e.g. they do not provide for sufficiently realistic, responsive or precise animations) for interactive applications such as video games and virtual reality simulations, i.e. applications in which a user has the choice to change the how the virtual object is being animated to perform character actions or goal-based commands, such as running at different speeds or in different directions.
In general, it is not possible to s

Method used

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  • Animation of a virtual object

Examples

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Embodiment Construction

[0041]In the description that follows and in the figures, certain embodiments of the invention are described. However, it will be appreciated that the invention is not limited to the embodiments that are described and that some embodiments may not include all of the features that are described below. It will be evident, however, that various modifications and changes may be made herein without departing from the broader spirit and scope of the invention as set forth in the appended claims.

1—System Overview

[0042]FIG. 1 schematically illustrates an example of a computer system 100. The system 100 comprises a computer 102. The computer 102 comprises: a storage medium 104, a memory 106, a processor 108, an interface 110, a user output interface 112, a user input interface 114 and a network interface 116, which are all linked together over one or more communication buses 118.

[0043]The storage medium 104 may be any form of non-volatile data storage device such as one or more of a hard dis...

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PUM

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Abstract

A target animation includes a blend of two or more animations from a plurality of predetermined animations. The blend includes a weighted combination of the two or more animations based on respective blend weights. In a method of generating a target animation of a virtual object, an input identifying a first point, specifying the target animation, in a control parameter space is received. A second point corresponding to the first point is determined using a predetermined displacement function. A barycentric coordinate for the second point in the control parameter space is determined. The barycentric coordinate is defined relative to predetermined points in the control parameter space, each predetermined point corresponding either to a respective one of the two or more animations or a respective blend of the two or more animations. The blend weights for the two or more animations are based on the barycentric coordinate for the second point.

Description

FIELD OF THE INVENTION[0001]The present invention relates to a method of generating a target animation of a virtual object and a method of enabling generation of a target animation of a virtual object, and apparatus and computer programs for carrying out such methods.BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION[0002]It is known to generate an animation for one or more virtual objects (also termed “characters”) that are located in a virtual environment, such as a three dimensional virtual environment of a video game or visual effects tool.[0003]For a virtual object, there may be a large number of actions or motions that may need to be represented as an animation of that virtual object. For example, a virtual object representing a human character may be animated so that the character walks, runs, hops, jumps, limps, skips, kneels down, falls down, crawls, looks or points in a particular direction, etc. An animation may be authored or created and data representing or defining the animation may then be ...

Claims

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Application Information

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IPC IPC(8): G06T13/00
CPCG06T13/00G06T13/40
InventorAGUADO, ALBERTO
OwnerNATURALMOTION